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With coronavirus, we are all living a dystopian film

An architecture critic reflects on a Dallas utterly changed.

This is the kind of story that, as a critic, I am loath to write: a response to a national catastrophe in which architecture has no direct role. From the other journalists at this paper, you will learn about the fight to contain the COVID-19 virus, about what you can do (stay home, wash your hands), about how our local businesses and institutions are faring.

For me? There aren’t any new buildings I can go visit at this time, and the streets are mostly empty. Downtown, the homeless wander with even fewer options than the few that are usually available. I can tell you that the beloved Italian architect and theorist Vittorio Gregotti — an architect’s architect — died of the virus in Milan. He was 92.

Driving around is a lonely, gut-churning business, because the city is so obviously not itself. What’s missing are people, and not just their physical presence, but their energy. Without people to animate them, buildings and places are just coordinates on a map, empty vessels. A city becomes an archaeological site.

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A full rainbow spans downtown Dallas, the rain-filled Trinity River and the Margaret Hunt...
A full rainbow spans downtown Dallas, the rain-filled Trinity River and the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, Thursday March 19, 2020. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)
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Parts of it may be in ruin, too. It was not long ago that the biggest story in Dallas was our half-demolished Leaning Tower. It’s down now. But, if a full-blown recession hits, will the development that was to replace it go up, or will we be stuck with a barren lot? Just a few blocks from my home, the historic Highland Park Soda Fountain, open for more than a century, was taken down. Did we lose that landmark for nothing?

If there is one place where I’ve found a bit of normalcy, one place where a sense of community remains, it’s the Katy Trail. It’s crowded all the time — not just in the mornings and evenings, as is usual. Couples together. Individuals. Yes, people are maintaining their distance from each other, but they are out jogging, biking, walking their dogs. It’s where everyone who’s been cooped up can go out, get a bit of necessary exercise, experience a bit of nature, and see that they are not alone. It’s urban design at its very best.

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At home, we’re getting community through our screens, which is ironic, to say the very least. How often have we complained that our screened devices and the social media they enable have turned us into self-absorbed drones, our eyes always down, paying no mind to the world around us? It says something about our collective digital obsession that we need laws to keep us from using these devices while driving.

Devices isolate us physically, but they also silo us in a myriad other ways: We can see only what we want to see, who we want to hear — cancel anything that doesn’t fit our particular interest or worldview. Polarization is becoming our new national pastime. That is social distancing.

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It’s not a new development. It’s been 20 years since Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. In the book, Putnam argues that the rise of television and then the internet eroded the public life of the country, leading to a precipitous decline of social interaction and public engagement. “People watch Friends instead of having friends.”

Our sprawling communities only exacerbate that isolation. According to Putnam’s study, every 10 minutes of added commuting time leads to a 10% reduction in social interaction.

But here we are, and it might be that this little bit of added isolation is a good thing, temporarily. Meanwhile, the screens that have cauterized us are now our primary means of communication. The inevitable question: Can the technologies to which we have become addicted live up to their utopian promises?

That is a theme that, by eerie coincidence, I have been exploring with my students in the seminar I’m teaching on architecture and film. A few weeks ago, just before COVID-19 put us into an extended spring break, our topic was the cinema of urban dystopia.

If there’s a thematic through-line to this genre, it’s the insidious weaponization of advanced technology as a means of social control. That holds for the two dystopian classics filmed in Dallas: Logan’s Run and RoboCop. In the former, technology allows for a lifestyle of sybaritic ease — until the age of 30, when all citizens are killed off in a ritualized ceremony. In the latter, a sinister corporation builds a private police force of militarized robots.

The Dallas skyline looms behind actor Peter Weller during filming of the 1987 dystopian film...
The Dallas skyline looms behind actor Peter Weller during filming of the 1987 dystopian film 'RoboCop' outside Dallas City Hall.

Thrown up on screen, the potential terror of technology becomes entertaining. Such is the allure of the dystopian film, which distills the fears of its moment, and then projects them back in an exaggerated but fictional fashion that renders them harmless.

Among the most-watched films on streaming services at the moment are the epidemic thrillers Contagion and Outbreak. Those who can find a bit of escapist relief in these on-screen dystopias are fortunate. My worry: The next great dystopian film might just be a documentary.

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